Thinking that it was time to bring down the Monarch from his raptures to the level of
common sense, I determined to endeavour to open up to him some glimpses of the truth,
that is to say of the nature of things in Flatland. So I began thus: "How does your Royal
Highness distinguish the shapes and positions of his subjects? I for my part noticed by the
sense of sight, before I entered your Kingdom, that some of your people are Lines and
others Points, and that some of the Lines are larger --" "You speak of an impossibility,"
interrupted the King; "you must have seen a vision; for to detect the difference between a
Line and a Point by the sense of sight is, as every one knows, in the nature of things,
impossible; but it can be detected by the sense of hearing, and by the same means my
shape can be exactly ascertained. Behold me -- I am a Line, the longest in Lineland, over
six inches of Space --" "Of Length", I ventured to suggest. "Fool," said he, "Space is
Length. Interrupt me again, and I have done."
I apologized; but he continued scornfully, "Since you are impervious to argument, you
shall hear with your ears how by means of my two voices I reveal my shape to my Wives,
who are at this moment six thousand miles seventy yards two feet eight inches away, the
one to the North, the other to the South. Listen, I call to them."
He chirruped, and then complacently continued: "My wives at this moment receiving the
sound of one of my voices, closely followed by the other, and perceiving that the latter
reaches them after an interval in which sound can traverse 6.457 inches, infer that one of
my mouths is 6.457 inches further from them than the other, and accordingly know my
shape to be 6.457 inches. But you will of course understand that my wives do not make
this calculation every time they hear my two voices. They made it, once for all, before we
were married. But they COULD make it at any time. And in the same way I can estimate
the shape of any of my Male subjects by the sense of sound."
"But how," said I, "if a Man feigns a Woman's voice with one of his two voices, or so
disguises his Southern voice that it cannot be recognized as the echo of the Northern?
May not such deceptions cause great inconvenience? And have you no means of
checking frauds of this kind by commanding your neighbouring subjects to feel one
another?" This of course was a very stupid question, for feeling could not have answered
the purpose; but I asked with the view of irritating the Monarch, and I succeeded
perfectly.
"What!" cried he in horror, "explain your meaning." "Feel, touch, come into contact," I
replied. "If you mean by FEELING," said the King, "approaching so close as to leave no
space between two individuals, know, Stranger, that this offence is punishable in my
dominions by death. And the reason is obvious. The frail form of a Woman, being liable
to be shattered by such an approximation, must be preserved by the State; but since
Women cannot be distinguished by the sense of sight from Men, the Law ordains
universally that neither Man nor Woman shall be approached so closely as to destroy the
interval between the approximator and the approximated.
